


good for you

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: @glitterghost the dirty talk is your fault, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Brotherly Love, Courtship, Dating, Dirty Talk, First Time Bottoming, Love Letter to Declan Lynch, M/M, Post-Canon, Praise Kink, Wooing, all of declan's brothers friends are unfairly hot, can you tell i'm a bisexual mess just like declan lynch, don't ask the gangsey for love advice, jiang is totally from vancouver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-11 23:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18434732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Impress me, Lynch,” Jiang said.(AKA, Declan's got it bad for Jiang. With sexy results.)





	good for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justdk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justdk/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Deeks! Here is porn for you, with feelings and a flimsy plot. <3

“Impress me, Lynch,” Jiang said, and kissed his teeth, grinning with a flash of gold incisor. It was a mocking thing, that smile and that sound, wet suction signifying dismissal— the implication being that there was nothing Declan might do that would impress a being such as Jiang Hu. 

It was  _ intoxicating.  _

That is where it begins. 

***

“No, really,” Ronan said, obnoxious and loud and  _ incredulous.  _ “What the fuck?” 

“Ronan.” Declan said, like he meant  _ shut the fuck up twerp before I beat you bloody.  _

_ “Dicklan.”  _ Ronan said, like he meant  _ bring it on, motherfucker.  _

“Ronan.” Adam said, like he meant  _ Ronan,  _ and pressed one hand to the space between Ronan’s shoulderblades, like he meant  _ stop it you dick, he’s serious.  _

“I literally  _ cannot.” _ Henry Cheng stage-whispered to Blue, who was holding in laughter. 

“He’s lost the ability to ‘can.’” Gansey laughed, proud of his newfound proficiency in cultural references, lounging indolently with his head in Blue’s lap and his feet in Cheng’s, only missing a bunch of grapes to be a true picture of debutant decadence. 

“What the  _ fuck,” _ Ronan whispered, and Declan kneaded viciously at the skin of his forehead, trying futilely to combat the tension headache that had been building since he’d arrived at his childhood home to consult the group of  _ children  _ congregated on its porch. 

This was a  _ terrible  _ idea. 

***

“Acceptable,” Jiang said, taking the still-hot container of Timbits with a delicate raise of his brow, the left one— not the one that was notched in the arch. He was very clearly  _ not  _ impressed, taking out a single ‘Bit to eat before tossing the rest of the pack to his Pack, Skov and Prokopenko  _ cackling  _ as they stuffed the pastries into their greedy mouths, eyes wide as saucers and pupils the size of dinner plates. Clearly  _ very  _ amused by whatever they perceived to be happening between Declan and one of their own. 

Declan didn’t complain about how hard it had been to ensure that they’d be yet fresh as he transported them several hundred miles to be offered at Jiang’s feet. He didn’t ask  _ do you like them?  _ He did not deign to ask for a kiss. 

Declan only nodded, short and businesslike, face blank and mouth flat. “Jiang.” He said, the taste of the name like spun sugar and venom on his tongue, and nodded at Swan, whose stone face betrayed nothing but whose eyes were predator-bright. 

“Lynch.” Jiang dismissed him easily, and Declan could feel those dark eyes on his back as he got back into the Volvo. He had not  _ quite  _ shut the driver’s side door before Skov and Prokopenko  _ roared  _ with laughter. His cheeks burned, hidden behind the windshield’s dark tint. 

Better. He’d have to do better. 

***

“Flowers,” Gansey said, decisively, and then smiled, closing his eyes for a moment to bask in the sweet May sunlight. He was shirtless, and leaned up against the Pig, a cloth in one hand. His shoulders were rounded, broad, thick with muscle. Everywhere his skin was bared, he was suntanned a deep gold that made Declan’s mouth go a little dry. This was not an uncommon sensation around Dick Gansey. When he opened his eyes again, Declan felt caught as he forced himself to again match their gazes. 

“Flowers,” Declan repeated dubiously, squinting a little, trying to decide if Gansey was making fun of him or not. It was even odds. Especially since all of the Glendower mess had ended, Gansey tended to be impish as often as he was grave. 

“Everyone likes flowers.” Gansey nodded, and then went back to gently wiping down the hood of his Camaro, back muscles flexing with each swipe. He was a porn cliche in the  _ worst  _ way, bent over the hood of his own car in the Monmouth parking lot.

***

“You brought me flowers.” Jiang said. 

“Delphinium,” Declan supplied, filling the silence between the two of them. Jiang looked down at the bountiful bouquet held aloft in Declan’s grip, petals very nearly brushing his chest, as if he’d never in his life seen a flower before. He blinked, slowly. His mouth flattened, then twitched. 

“Delphinium,” he repeated, humming in amusement. His eyes were bright. He seemed on the verge of laughter. Patches of hectic pink rose to the points of his high cheekbones. It was an unfairly attractive look. 

“They’re, ah. For you.” Declan managed to spit out, feeling more and more foolish by the second. 

“Ardent affection.” Jiang murmured, and it was then Declan’s turn to flush, feeling out of control and not sure if he liked it or not. 

He opened his mouth again to say something, anything- anything that might  _ impress  _ Jiang, anything that might  _ persuade  _ him- of  _ what,  _ Declan found himself suddenly unsure. 

_ “Jiang!”  _ Skov hollered, leaning out the window of his zippy and obnoxious little RX-7, beating on its glossy black door with one hand while the other draped over the wheel. He was all bleach-blond hair and backwards snapback, zippy and obnoxious himself. Even across the parking lot, his teeth were obscenely white. Declan felt annoyance creeping in along his temples, entwining in the blood vessels around his eye sockets. “Move your ass, baby!” He continued, jeering, cheerfully obscene. 

Jiang did laugh, then, all teeth and that metallic flash that was so maddening, so  _ appealing.  _ So  _ infuriating,  _ because Declan had not been the one to cause it, for all his careful tiptoeing and chivalrous gestures. It was a sharp, taxing reminder of what was common knowledge around Aglionby- that Kavinsky’s pack of dogs weren’t just poker buddies. They flaunted their carnal knowledge of each other with casual, menacing exhibitionism, handsy and mocking. 

_ Fuck you, Gansey,  _ he thought viciously, and burned under his collar as Jiang took the flowers with a careless yank and then jogged off with nothing more than a called-over-the-shoulder, casual  _ later!,  _ abandoning Declan in favor of taking up occupation of the passenger seat of Skov’s  _ fucking  _ Mazda. He tossed the bouquet carelessly into its miniscule backseat; Declan imagined the petals crumpling, falling off, drying out and rotting in Skov’s floorboards. Imagined Jiang  _ laughing  _ at him, hot and damp against Skov’s nape as he fucked him over the RX-7’s hood. 

Skov’s tires  _ screamed  _ as he threw the car into reverse, pulling a wide and messy turnabout and hooting a rebel yell as they left the lot. 

_ Fuck.  _ Declan needed a  _ drink.  _ Or a fight. 

He resolved to head back to Alexandria, then, and think no more about Jiang Hu for the rest of the night. Or, more likely, to get so fall-down drunk he wouldn’t remember thinking of Jiang Hu tomorrow morning. 

***

“You’re asking  _ me  _ how to fuck Jiang Hu.” Ronan said blankly, rolling the words around in his mouth like marbles that might at any second turn into firecrackers. As if the combination of words made absolutely no sense. 

Well, to be fair, they kind of  _ didn’t.  _ Ronan had no game. Ronan had the  _ opposite  _ of game. Ronan’s idea of  _ seduction  _ boiled down to mercilessly making fun of the object of his desire until they either punched him or kissed him, or both. Declan was aware of all of this. 

Declan was  _ also  _ aware that Ronan, who on a good day resembled nothing so much as a pile of broken glass, had far more experience dealing with  _ men  _ than he did, even if  _ men  _ boiled down to Gansey, Kavinsky, and Parrish, and only one of those  _ men  _ had gotten past the  _ punching  _ stage of Ronan’s version of  _ pitching woo.  _

(Probably. Maybe. To be perfectly honest, Declan had his doubts about Gansey. There had to be  _ some  _ reason why he’d stuck with Ronan all these years, and it sure wasn’t his younger brother’s interior decorating skills.) 

“I am  _ asking you  _ how to  _ impress  _ him.” Declan corrected, and again found himself kneading at the tension headache that had bloomed right at the center of his forehead. 

“Have you tried, like, uh. Money?” Ronan asked, mystified, eyeing Declan’s suit. “Buy him something. Take him somewhere. Rent a jet, I don’t know. Call Helen and borrow her helicopter. Can you fly a helicopter?” Ronan, Declan realized, was  _ making an effort.  _ It was possibly worse than it might’ve been had he decided to just be a sarcastic asshole about the whole thing. 

“No I can’t  _ fly a helicopter,  _ what the fuck Ronan.” Declan said, but the punch he delivered to Ronan’s bicep was a friendly, fraternal sort of affection. They both cleared their throats gruffly in the aftermath of the thing, and Declan decided to leave before it got any more sappy. 

A helicopter. Huh. 

***

Jiang filled out a suit very well. It was possibly the most distressing part of the entire evening, including Helen Gansey’s hereto-untold way of  _ leering  _ in  _ disdain, _ the helicopter ride which had made Declan horrendously nauseous, the fact that the opera was performed entirely in Italian, and the way Jiang had nearly fallen asleep before the second act. 

No, fuck  _ possibly-  _ Jiang’s broad shoulders were  _ definitely  _ the most distressing part of the entire evening, and Declan felt helpless at the sight of them clad in a perfectly-tailored oxblood windowpane that made Jiang appear a foot taller than usual and even more impossibly leonine. 

_ Ashley  _ had always loved the opera, loved it when they had any excuse to wear black tie, loved the touch of his hand on her lower back as he steered them to their seats.  _ Jiang  _ had shrugged him off easily, and strode with single-minded confidence, perfectly turned-out for the occasion and perfectly at-ease among the society crowd, even as he kept up his perfectly bored facade. It was a trash fire of a date. Declan spent the second act watching his chances at  _ impressing  _ Jiang crash and burn like he’d been terrified the helicopter would on the entire 90 minute ride up. 

“Tonight was…” Jiang said as they walked the crowded New York City sidewalk in their finery, Declan’s stride matching his in a way that was both unfamiliar and… titillating. Without seemingly realizing it, Jiang had taken the side of the pavement closest to the road, blocking Declan from whatever harm that such a position may present. Somehow the world looked different from this vantage point, tilted and odd in a way that made Declan feel off-balance in a way that was not entirely unpleasant. 

“Was…?” Declan prompted, when Jiang seemed like he would not finish the thought, silence between them and the noise of the crowded metropolis all around them like a cacophonous cocoon. 

“Interesting.” Jiang finished, very nearly shrugging, and what he did not say  _ (impressive)  _ loomed behind them, lagging behind until it could not have caught up for anything. Declan burned, embarrassed around the tonsils and inflamed with want in the very pit of his stomach. He wanted, for a brief moment, to catch Jiang by the arms and  _ shake  _ him, demand answers, demand  _ demands.  _ It had always been easier to impress girls, who did not mind to be blunt and transparent about what would please them. Those relationships had been comfortingly transactional, and Declan wanted to say he preferred them, when truthfully he felt as if he’d been asleep for years and was only just now waking, stirred up over Jiang Hu. 

Helen waited for them at the helipad on top of a building owned by some man who owed her a favor; she was, as always, a formidable thing, a jaguar in Ralph Lauren that greeted them with a placid smile that belied just how amusing she found this whole thing to be. Once, he’d fancied himself in terrible love with Helen Gansey; he’d been seventeen and on the tail-end of a growth spurt that had his hormones all out of whack. He’d been all but scrawling  _ Mr. Declan Gansey  _ on his homework, torn to pieces and jerking off to the pictures of her he’d scoured the society pages to find. 

Then, of course, his father had died, and suddenly Helen had been  _ too much.  _ Had been too lofty a goal; he didn’t have the time for twenty-five-step plans of underage seduction. Had been more interested in finding someone who would not hold him accountable for anything except the generous doling-out of his father’s money. 

“Did you boys have fun?” Helen asked, all cheek, and swung herself up into the cockpit before they could muster any kind of reply. Declan thought about giving Jiang his hand to help him into the helicopter, like he would’ve done thoughtlessly for any of the girls he’d gone out with. Before he could decide on the gesture’s appropriateness, however, Jiang took him by the elbow and helped  _ him  _ clamber up into his seat. Helen, now wearing her flight helmet and strapped in, bit down on her amused grin. 

The return flight was just as turbulent and terrible as the first; Declan kept his mouth closed tight and his thumb tucked into his left fist, trying not to throw up. 

Jiang did not speak either, but briefly curled one hand around Declan’s trouser-clad thigh, high up, high enough that his pinky brushed against his inseam. Declan swallowed thickly and closed his eyes, resolving himself to being both nauseous  _ and  _ horny for an hour and a half. 

Helen laughed merrily at his expense, and kept up a viciously mocking color-commentary the entire flight home. 

***

“Does he even  _ like  _ opera?” Adam Parrish asked dubiously, rolling out from beneath the Chevy that he was working on to give Declan a considering sort of look. He used his abdominal muscles to curl up far enough to grab the rag tucked into his back pocket, mopping at the grease on his fingers and blowing a strand of too-long cornsilk-blonde hair from his eyes. 

Declan sighed, crossing his arms and then his legs, and then uncrossing them, trying not to seem like a socialite complaining to her gal-pals over brunch in either posture or manner. “Does anyone actually  _ like  _ opera?” Declan countered, peevish. Adam gave him a  _ look,  _ like  _ god why do I surround myself with Lynches?  _ It was a familiar sort of exasperated expression, and it made Declan feel a bit affectionate towards his brother’s… psychic townie life-partner. Parrish was definitely the brains of the operation; where Ronan had suggested just splashing out with cash and helicopters, Adam deliberated. 

“He’s from Vancouver, right?” Adam asked, in a leading way that meant he knew the answer but did not feel like revealing it to Declan at this time, preferring to watch him squirm. 

“Yes?” Declan all but snapped, all frustration now. 

“And what do people from Vancouver like?” Adam went on, showy and superior. Elegant and regal. He was wasted on Ronan, Declan thought idly. 

“Good talk.” Declan said shortly, and rose, glancing down at Parrish’s still-filthy hands. “I’d shake, but…” He trailed off, showy and superior, himself. 

Parrish’s hackles did not raise, as they might’ve before he and Ronan and Gansey sorted their shit out. He only grinned, a crooked kind of smile, and wheeled himself back beneath the car, going back to work. 

Vancouver. 

***

_ “WHAT THE FUCK, REF?”  _ Jiang bellowed, kitted out in a blue-and-green jersey that somehow managed to make his shoulders seem even  _ broader,  _ despite the fact that it was like a polyester sack that hung halfway to his knees. He beat his hands on the glass, shouting abuse and swearing like a sailor. The majority of the hockey fans around them were similarly occupied, and everything smelled like sweat and ice and cheap Canadian beer. Declan, himself dressed in neutral grays and blacks, blinked and felt snootily disdainful of the whole affair, wishing vainly for his quiet apartment and his desk and a list of numbers to be settled in front of him. This was the kind of thing Ronan liked; the sort of environment where Matthew seemed to have sprung up from the seafoam to occupy space like a golden young demigod. Declan preferred darkness, and shadow, and  _ quiet.  _

It was hard not to be drawn in by Jiang’s enthusiasm, though; he swore and joined in on rude chants and his normally-light Canadian accent came out heavy on the vowels, charming to a fault. He swilled beer like water, but did not seem to be affected by it like some of the more… voracious imbibers on either side of them. 

Declan squared his shoulders and tried to feel more involved in the game, whose rules he only vaguely understood; he schooled his features into something more  _ interested,  _ but feared he had failed when Jiang turned to look at him after a goal was scored, hawk eyes seeing what Declan would not say for a million dollar payout. Jiang’s pleasure muted itself, turned into thoughtfulness; he went from exuberant young man to wise-eyed predator in the space of a few seconds. 

Declan was achy through the joints with how badly he wanted, had  _ been  _ wanting. The chase had never been this long before, this involved, this  _ visceral.  _

(The chase had never felt like  _ this,  _ before, like one misstep would lead to his demise.) 

The flight back to Virginia was silent beyond a few murmured platitudes and quiet observations on the game, mostly made by Jiang, with Declan supplying humming noises that could be taken ambiguously. Jiang’s breath smelled of the beer he’d drunk, yeasty-sweet, and Declan imagined licking the taste of it off the roof of his mouth. Wanted to, even though the space between them was as wide and forbidding as the Atlantic. 

***

_ “Diamonds,”  _ Henry Cheng said, and barely contained his mirth long enough to spit out the word. Declan could not even summon up the energy to sigh; he had a paper due tomorrow night that just would not come together right, Matthew was dating some new girl he’d met and was spending a lot of time ‘hanging out’ with her in the middle of the night with his Top 40s hip-hop turned up loud, and Ronan was going through what he called a ‘creative  _ fuckin  _ block’ and had not produced anything suitable for Declan to broker a deal on in upwards of two weeks. The pressure was mounting, building up, until he felt as if his skull would burst like a watermelon stuffed with a bottle rocket. Gruesome, yet cartoonish. 

“No.” Declan said, and left, considering getting himself a hotel room for the night just so he could get some sleep without having to listen to Fetty Wap until three a.m. 

***

In bed, sometimes, he found his mind wandering to Jiang, wondering what it would be like.  _ It.  _ He’d not claim to have never desired a man before; any boy who’d come up through the ranks from tender freshman to world-weary senior at Aglionby would have to concede that there was something to be said for the effect of gender segregation on the burgeoning sexualities of young men, ages fourteen to eighteen. Declan had, like everyone else, had thoughts of hard-planed stomachs and thickly-muscled glutes right alongside of his more red-blooded fantasies of Kate Upton and Orla Sargent. It was practically an Aglionby rite of passage, to have wet dreams about your sophomore-year roommate, especially in the long stretch of February, when it was too cold to go out searching the streets for townie girls to pant after and midterms loomed. 

When he thought of Jiang, though, it was different. He considered not only the implications of Jiang’s broad shoulders and clever hands, but thought also of the cool metallurgic caress of Jiang’s grill on his skin, the weight of Jiang’s body above his, the way it would feel to be allowed to  _ touch  _ when he’d been denied so long. 

Declan sighed, emptying his lungs until his chest burned with it, and finally decided to sleep. 

_ Baby, won’t you come my way? Got somethin’ I want to say. Cannot keep you off my brain,  _ Fetty Wap wailed plaintively across the hall. 

Declan sighed again, and then bellowed. “Go the  _ fuck  _ to sleep, Matty!” 

The music cut out in a cacophony of giggles and swearing. Matthew hollered back, sounding both giddy and apologetic. “Sorry, Dec!” 

Declan sighed a third and final time, and rolled over, pressing his face into the pillow, smothering his fond little grin.

***

“Why don’t you just  _ ask  _ him what he wants?” Blue Sargent queried sensibly, squinting up at Declan from where she was crouched in the dirt in front of her ramshackle den of heathenism and blasphemy. 300 Fox Way spilled color and mystery out every window, every door, every  _ air vent. _ Its cracked front steps afforded a tinge of aesthetic kitsch to the entire effect that, if it were to be marketed, would earn the place a top spot on some HGTV list or another.  _ Top 10 Cutest Tarot Parlors in America!,  _ maybe. 

She drew her forearm across her forehead, sweeping off the sweat that had gathered there and showing off the lush curve of her bicep, bared by the straps of her cut-off denim overalls. She was putting in golden-petaled violets, tickling their roots with knowing fingers before transplanting them into the flowerbed she occupied like she herself was some exotic foliage, all riotous hair barely contained with clips and a bandana and miles of cinnamon-toned skin. Not for the first time, Declan considered the sheer improbability that  _ all  _ of his brother’s friends were gorgeous enough to be fashion models. 

“How is  _ that  _ impressive?” Declan retorted, bristling, again rethinking his decision to ask a bunch of socially-awkward eighteen-year-olds for romantic advice. 

Blue rolled her eyes and bent her head back to her task, smoothing soil around the base of a newly-planted bloom with the same tenderness one might use to tuck a particularly-beloved child into bed. She had capable-looking hands. All of her was capable-looking. She was both reassuring and infuriating, if only because Declan could hear how whiny and nonsensical he sounded and knew that she was wiser than he’d ever be. 

“Ask him.” She repeated, and jerked her chin towards the curb where he’d parked his Volvo. “Now either get off my lawn or go buy a reading, I’ve got things to do.” 

***

Jiang’s dorm room was laid out exactly as Declan’s had been, when he still lived in Effervescence. Two beds, two desks, two clothes closets, each pair of rooms sharing a single bathroom with two sinks, a shower, and a toilet. Declan’s roommate had been the son of the governor of North Carolina, unfortunately nicknamed  _ Taddy.  _ He’d been inoffensive enough, especially since his solution to dealing with the awkwardness surrounding Niall Lynch’s death had been to pretend as if it had not happened. 

Jiang did not appear to have a roommate, with the left side of the room left empty and unoccupied, even though Declan knew through the grapevine that Skov was, and had been since freshman year, assigned to share with him.

He raised his eyebrows at finding Declan before him, standing tall in a casual suit with hands in his pockets under the hallway’s shitty fluorescent light, washed-out against all the dark green and cherry wood that made up the majority of Aglionby’s interior decorating scheme. 

“Lynch,” he said, as if there was no other Lynch. As if Declan was the only one that mattered. He stepped back, gesturing for Declan to come in. “What a surprise.” 

He wasn’t wearing his uniform. A pair of basketball shorts strained across his slim hips and a crew shirt strained across his chest and shoulders. He looked unfairly good. Declan was again cottonmouthed, confronted with how  _ good  _ Jiang looked. 

“What do you want?” He blurted, inelegant and unpracticed for the first time in too-long, earnest and already half-hard in his slacks. Everything was a mess. He was a mess. Jiang blinked at him, and then tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowing. Considering. 

“Come here.” He said, walking back a few steps to settle down on the edge of his own bed. He said it like a command, like he knew Declan was going to follow him. Like he knew the way Declan’s stomach cramped with need at the sight of him, looking rumpled and soft in the privacy of his own room. A more intimate Jiang than the one he’d been dragging across the Great White North for the last few weeks in an evidently-futile attempt at making an impression. 

Declan thought about staying put, but couldn’t make himself stay still. He crossed the floor, let Jiang snag his wrist and tug him in further, until he stood between Jiang’s carelessly-sprawled thighs. “You took me to the  _ opera.”  _ Jiang said, like he was on the verge of laughter. With his other hand, the one not holding Declan in place by the wrist with a grip tight enough to grind ulna with radius, he wrapped Declan’s tie around his fist, tugging him down the scant inches needed to press their mouths together. 

As far as first kisses went, it was. It  _ was.  _ Declan was  _ shuddering,  _ caught and held, pinned like a butterfly on a display board, all of him opened up for dissection under Jiang’s ministrations with tongue and  _ teeth.  _ It was masterful. Jiang could teach a doctorate-level seminar on how to conquer anyone with just one kiss. If he wasn’t hopelessly caught up in Jiang’s  _ everything  _ before this, Declan thought wildly, the kiss would’ve clinched the deal, sealed his fate. 

As it was, coming here had been a surrender.  _ Asking  _ had been the white flag. Now Declan was reduced to  _ this,  _ the spoils of a war he only just realized he’d been futilely waging. 

With a twist of his body, Jiang bore Declan down onto his back on the bed, legs hanging off the side and tangled up together. Their teeth knocked together, painful but  _ hot.  _ Declan didn’t care. He’d let Jiang hurt him worse, if that’s what he wanted. 

Anything. Everything. He was burning up. He’d  _ been  _ burning up. 

“You bought me  _ flowers.”  _ Jiang whispered, hot, in his ear, nipping at the lobe. He  _ was  _ laughing. “Took me to a hockey game you didn’t even care about. Fuck.” He punctuated this with a dirty grind of his hips downward, rude enough that part of Declan wondered deliriously where all that fabled Canadian politeness was. “Tried all this shit to get my attention, for what? What do you  _ want,  _ Lynch?” 

_ You,  _ Declan thought, and gasped with it, the sound needy and shivery. “I want  _ everything.”  _ He replied, and meant it down to his bones. He’d been born wanting. Had grown up starving. Lived now like a spectre in his own life, a vampire skulking in the background of every touching family scene, a half-thing with no recourse but to beg. 

_ “There  _ you are,” Jiang said, praising him, like this answer satisfied him. “Hold still.” He commanded, and Declan lay with his hands up by his head, pliant, even as Jiang roughly wrestled the suit off of him, leaving him naked except for his crucifix and socks. He sat back on his heels, surveying Declan like a king might survey his land from some high vantage point. Declan felt like a conquered thing, and was surprised to find he didn’t mind the feeling. 

“Tell me nobody’s touched you here,” Jiang demanded, skimming a hand up the inside of Declan’s right thigh to both open his legs up and rub his fingertips against where Declan was blood-hot and clenching, dry and insistent. Declan felt like he couldn’t breathe, like all the blood had rushed to his head and he might actually die from being too turned on. 

“Nobody’s-” he tried to say, and ended up shouting when Jiang leaned forward enough to  _ spit  _ on him, pressing in with one saliva-slicked fingertip, curious, head tilted again to the side like a hawk, maybe, or an eagle. Some bird of prey, ready to snatch him up and tear him to pieces. “Jiang,  _ please.”  _ He begged, unaccustomed to the practice. 

_ “This,”  _ Jiang said, even as he reached over to pull out a tube of some kind of lube that smelled strongly of  _ blackberries  _ and was cold as he squirted it directly onto Declan, making him even more of a mess between the legs than he’d been already. He was so hard he was dripping with it, and felt like he’d cry with how badly he  _ wanted.  _ “Is what I want.”  _ This,  _ being Declan writhing on his fingers, surprised at how  _ good  _ it felt.  _ This,  _ being the utter desperation writ in every taut, trembling line of Declan’s body, straining either to come or  _ not  _ to, depending on the second. 

“Anything,” Declan agreed, nodding blindly, overcome. “Fuck, anything, just please,  _ Jiang,”  _ he didn’t have to keep begging. Jiang leaned up, in, shoved down his shorts enough to free his cock, thick and sturdy, and pushed it  _ in,  _ in where Declan had until very recently not even  _ thought  _ about allowing  _ anyone  _ to be.  _ Inside.  _ It was wonderful. It was terrible. It was  _ everything,  _ and Declan was going to pieces but he couldn’t even help it, sucking a messy and  _ dark  _ hickey into Jiang’s throat, a habit that not even his most strident girlfriends had managed to break him of. Jiang fucked him with short, sharp thrusts that knocked the wind from his lungs at every turn. He’d wanted so much that he’d not even really realized what he’d do when he got it- reality was better than anything he had or could have ever imagined, because he could never have conjured up  _ this,  _ Jiang fucking him in this close, small room that smelled so strongly of blackberries that Declan was sure the fruit had been ruined for him, because he would never be able to eat them without thinking of  _ this.  _

“Come on, Lynch,” Jiang said to him, indulgent and fond, and when he grinned it was all pearl-white enamel, no gold in sight, but that was alright, because Declan was seeing enough gold sparks to make up for it. “Impress me.” He said, and reached down to wrap his fingers around Declan’s cock. 

“Oh  _ fuck-”  _ Declan choked out, and then came messily between them. 

***

“The  _ opera,”  _ Jiang said, laughing, dreamy and messy and sprawled out on his back next to Declan. They were touching more places than they weren’t, thanks to the narrow width of the standard Aglionby Twin XL mattress. Declan wondered why Jiang didn’t shove the beds together to make a double, but quickly dismissed the thought. He preferred this, this closeness. Smelling Jiang’s sweat and the gone-tacky remains of the blackberry lube, even though Jiang had gotten up in the aftermath of his orgasm to open the window and have a quick smoke, looking like he belonged in some big-bucks Hollywood spy movie. 

“Shut up. It was my brother’s idea.” Declan mumbled, and wondered if he’d be able to move sometime in the near future or if he should arrange to take all of his business calls from Jiang’s bed, running his father’s empire in between getting fucked silly whenever time permitted. 

Jiang paused, and then let out a peal of laughter that echoed off the walls, practically fucking  _ hooting  _ with it. “Ronan fucking  _ Lynch  _ told you to take me to the  _ opera!”  _ He cackled, and then rolled, grabbing his cell phone. Declan watched him punch out a text to a group chat labeled  _ packpackpack.  _ Prokopenko sent back a string of near-incomprensible emojis within a moment of receiving the news, relayed as  _ rlynch iz th 1 who sed 2 take me 2 opera wtf wtf wtf.  _ Charming. 

Declan huffed, hiding his smile in the crook of his elbow, and closed his eyes, falling into a light doze to the symphony of Jiang’s quiet chuckling and the tap of his fingers on the screen of his iPhone. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


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